I still remember the exact moment my first "brilliant" concept fell apart. It was week four of studio, I'd built this beautiful little story about tidal rhythms and coastal erosion, and my tutor looked at my plan, then back at me, and asked one quiet question: "So where's the tide in this?" I had no answer. The idea was still sitting pretty on my opening board. The plan behind it had nothing to...

I still remember the first piece of MBA coursework I marked that made me sit up straight. It wasn't because the student had memorised every line of Porter's Five Forces plenty of students can do that. It was because, three paragraphs in, they stopped describing the framework and started using it to argue for something. They took a position. They said, in effect, "here is what this business...

A few years ago, I was handed the homepage of a small delivery app and told to "make it sound less like a brochure." The line I inherited read: "Our innovative platform provides enhanced solutions for modern users." I asked three people in the office what that actually meant. Nobody could tell me not even the person who'd written it. So I binned it and wrote instead: "Check your orders,...